I’m just going to make a few offhand remarks about other teams around the majors, and then move on to a much broader statement than usual about the Orioles.

The Astros are, by far, the worst team in baseball. It’s really not even close.

Sometimes you have to wonder what teams are thinking. The Phillies’ decision not to break up their club was curious after a mere glance at their W-L record, but when you look at their run differential, and the fact that they’ve been the luckiest team in baseball despite being seven games under .500, you really have to wonder what they’re thinking. The Phillies are exactly one blowout loss away from having the worst run differential in the National League; there’s really not very much separating them from the Marlins. I was going to say that this franchise has a chance to descend into true awfulness, but they’re arguably already there.

I didn’t have high expectations for the Phillies this season anyway, so they don’t get to compete for “biggest disappointment” this year, so—in the NL—I think you’d have to pick between the Giants and Nationals.

If anything, the Braves’ lead in the NL East should be even larger than it is, and they’ve all but got the division locked away as things stand.

The Central is, by leaps and bounds, the best division in the National League.

How on earth are the Tigers not running away with the AL Central?

The Orioles

So about that 11-0 blowout last night at the hands of the worst team in baseball (the Astros entered last night’s game being outscored by an average of just under 1.6 R/G for the season. Project that rate forward and you have them being outscored by roughly 260 runs for the year, which is truly awful. Their Pythagorean projection for losses this year, prior to last night’s game, was 108. And yet…things like last night happen. On June 26, 1978, an Orioles team that was headed for 90 wins lost to a Blue Jays team that was on its way to 100 losses by a final score of 24-10. (If the O’s could simply have picked up that late TD and recovered the onside kick…)

So, last night’s game—though it was probably the team’s worst-played game of the year—was still only one loss. Now that I’ve talked you off the ledge, hopefully what I’m about to say won’t send you back through the window.

Last night alone doesn’t concern me, as I’ve stated above. But that doesn’t mean that I don’t think that there’s anything to be concerned about.

Below, I’m going to reproduce the AL chart from above, but this is only going to reflect games played in July:

Team

R

OR

R DIFF

G

R/G

OR/G

DIFF/G

PW%

EXP W

ACT W

W DIFF

Baltimore

94

102

-8

25

3.76

4.08

-0.32

.459

11

47

36

Boston

114

97

17

25

4.56

3.88

0.68

.580

15

47

32

Chicago

92

117

-25

26

3.54

4.50

-0.96

.382

10

47

37

Cleveland

117

94

23

25

4.68

3.76

0.92

.608

15

47

32

Detroit

153

92

61

26

5.88

3.54

2.35

.734

19

47

28

Houston

95

138

-43

24

3.96

5.75

-1.79

.322

8

47

39

Kansas City

97

101

-4

25

3.88

4.04

-0.16

.480

12

47

35

Los Angeles

95

121

-26

24

3.96

5.04

-1.08

.381

9

47

38

Minnesota

89

115

-26

26

3.42

4.42

-1.00

.375

10

47

37

New York

102

92

10

26

3.92

3.54

0.38

.551

14

47

33

Oakland

93

84

9

25

3.72

3.36

0.36

.551

14

47

33

Seattle

131

119

12

25

5.24

4.76

0.48

.548

14

47

33

Tampa Bay

120

69

51

26

4.62

2.65

1.96

.752

20

47

27

Texas

101

121

-20

26

3.88

4.65

-0.77

.411

11

47

36

Toronto

121

141

-20

26

4.65

5.42

-0.77

.424

11

47

36

1614

1603

11

190

4.25

4.22

It’s pretty obvious what’s going on—the offense (which always seemed to be built on an unsustainably hyper-aggressive model) has gone to seed. It’s actually been devolving slowly all year (June was worse than May, July was worse than June), but it really came into stark focus last month. The Orioles still rank fourth—though not by much—in runs per game for the season to date, but were a more than lackluster 11th in the AL in July.

The good news is that, as expected once the starting rotation became a bit more settled, the pitching improved. The Orioles now stand ninth in the league year to date and in July they were eighth, with an OR/G mark better than the league average by more than a tenth of a run. With the personnel now at hand, the pitching is probably legitimately about as good as it performed last month, which is to say, decent. Not great, but certainly not the lurking-near-the-bottom-of-the-league mess that we saw for most of the first three months of the season. Of course, everything is interconnected. The pitching would have seemed even better had the offense been scoring closer to five runs a game in July, as they did for most of the first three months of the season, rather than coming up short in their quest for four.

But it’s the offense that’s the key to all this. Is it really as bad as it looked last month? Probably not. While the first few months of the season were surely an aberration to a degree, I don’t think the Orioles’ offense was a complete fraud. But is it capable of scoring three quarters of a run better than the league average for two months? Ehhh….

Regardless of what I think, if the Orioles are going to remain in contention for a postseason berth, the offense is going to have to perform far better than it did in July when it came up approximately half a run worse than the league average. Last night’s mess notwithstanding (and, for what it’s worth, prior to the July 31 blowout the Orioles were allowing a hair below 3.8 runs per game in July, the better part of a half run below the league average), the pitching/defense is probably good enough to keep the Orioles within striking distance. But to reach the postseason, the Orioles are going to have to score runs at a rate that puts them in the upper third of the league (more or less), and they’re going to have do it, essentially, with the players they presently have on hand.